Street walking

Along M.H. del Pilar street in Manila’s Ermita district late Monday night, I saw clusters of young women, all fully made up and clad in provocative clothing, standing around in high-heeled shoes as they peered at passing cars.

The women were outside the handful of establishments that were open at that hour, all with dim lights. They looked like bars but I couldn’t hear any music. And from my years as a reporter, I’d say those were women of the night, waiting for clients.

Since SARS-CoV-2 entered the country, there have been reports of female sex workers being caught on ships anchored in Manila Bay, or riding on rubber boats on the way to the ships.

There have also been several raids during which Chinese men – the young ones who normally work in Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations – were caught with sex workers, some of them Filipinas, others Chinese.

As in previous crises such as the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda, the COVID pandemic has pushed millions into impoverishment. And poverty can push the desperate into the world’s oldest profession.

Even the threat of Omicron infection didn’t deter those women in Ermita from streetwalking.

In countries where prostitution is legal and regulated, sex workers have complained that the pandemic has devastated their trade.

In lower income countries like ours, worrying about infection can be a luxury for those who need to put food on the table. Among those who lost their livelihoods due to the pandemic, some (regardless of gender) can be vulnerable to recruiters in the flesh trade. Or they might be enticed by the idea that prostitution is a legitimate career choice.

We have a saying in Filipino for coping when in dire straits: kapit sa patalim. A person will hang on to anything, even a knife blade, for survival.

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Earnings from the flesh trade are surely higher than those of an ambulant vendor of lugaw with isaw washed down with sa malamig.

The earnings naturally depend on the clientele and the desirability of the sex worker, which inevitably deteriorates with age.

In my days as a crime reporter, the price for oral sex with a middle-aged sex worker in those narrow walk-ups along Ongpin street in Manila was a plate of pancit canton or the equivalent in cash. I learned the prices from the cops who raided the decrepit apartments regularly; the women kept going back.

Those girls along Ermita on Monday night, however, looked young and surely wouldn’t settle for a plate of braised noodles as payment.

With their earnings, they can afford not only to put food on the table but also to give their household members proper health care in case COVID strikes.

They can afford testing, not just with antigen but the gold standard, RT-PCR, and possibly even get home service (on average, an additional P5,000 on your bill) instead of just relying on paracetamol in hopes that infection symptoms will go away.

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For many, the reluctance to get tested is fueled by the steep cost of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction swab tests. Even the cheaper saliva RT-PCR, available exclusively at the Philippine Red Cross, is priced at P1,500, which can be more than a day’s earnings for a jeepney driver, the family’s main breadwinner.

What if Omicron spreads rapidly through a household of seven, a typical Filipino family size? That’s P10,500 for testing alone that the driver surely cannot afford.

There are only a handful of local government units that offer free RT-PCR, and the waiting lines are long for testing. Also, with the current positivity rate nearing 50 – meaning nearly half of COVID tests have positive results – there’s a high chance of getting infected while standing in line to get tested.

People are instead buying rapid antigen test kits, which can be used at home and can cost as low as P150 per test.

The government has warned that no antigen test kit has been approved so far for self-administered home use by the Food and Drug Administration, and has stressed that even antigen testing must be carried out by trained professionals. So why, in nearly two years, was no such product approved by the FDA, when these have been in use in countries such as the United States for many months now?

Health officials are discouraging the use of antigen tests because of their tendency to yield false positive or negative results, which can complicate virus containment.

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Testing czar Vince Dizon says the country’s current RT-PCR testing capacity stands at 80,000. Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire says it’s 100,000, with 90,000 tests carried out at the height of the Delta surge that began in August last year.

So don’t settle for an antigen test; book an RT-PCR. There are home services available for entire households.

This is possible, unfortunately, only for those who can afford testing. For those on a tight budget, you can get paracetamol for itchy throat and developing cold / cough – now limited to 20 tablets per person, 60 per household.

People are turning to even cheaper alternatives such as calamansi juice, ginger juice or salabat, fresh lagundi leaf infusion for cough, salt and warm water gargle, and even steam inhalation or tuob.

Obviusly, paracetamol will work only for the mild or asymptomatic cases.

If a vulnerable member of the household develops severe infection (still possible with Omicron, and the lethal Delta is still around), lands in the hospital and needs intubation, that’s when some of those who can afford only paracetamol may be forced to hang on to a knife blade, and walk the streets for survival.